Here are 92 books that The Patron Saint of Liars fans have personally recommended if you like
The Patron Saint of Liars.
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I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and am the middle daughter of three. My sisters and I were close in age, and, of course, our home was girl-centered. The three of us attended the same all-girls Catholic high school, though we each had our own friends. Because of my childhood, I love books that explore how women make friends and keep them, how we let them go, and why. The genesis of friendships interests me, whether childhood, high school, college or motherhood. I love to read books by women where girlfriendships are not an afterthought or window dressing but central to the characters’ inner lives and the story being told.
I loved this book for its innovative approach to time travel. It’s not concerned with altering history but about time travel on a granular level. Alice travels back to her 16th birthday, which her 40-year-old self knows was a pivotal night.
In the present day, Alice has remained friends with her high school best friend, Sam. I suspect many authors would have had them lose touch as adults and I loved that the novel is not predictably about Alice revisiting their high school friendship.
I also appreciated how Alice is entranced, at first, by the freedom of being a teenager again, but she’s soon caught up in the same struggles. Sam is her through-line, her confidant, helping her decide what in her life should change and what should not.
“The pages brim with tenderness and an appreciation for what we had and who we were. I could not have loved it more."—Ann Patchett
“The kind of book that will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you call the people you love. Exceptional."—Emily Henry
"Delightful"—Boston Globe
"Poignant"—New York Times
What if you could take a vacation to your past?
With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.
I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and am the middle daughter of three. My sisters and I were close in age, and, of course, our home was girl-centered. The three of us attended the same all-girls Catholic high school, though we each had our own friends. Because of my childhood, I love books that explore how women make friends and keep them, how we let them go, and why. The genesis of friendships interests me, whether childhood, high school, college or motherhood. I love to read books by women where girlfriendships are not an afterthought or window dressing but central to the characters’ inner lives and the story being told.
I recommend The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez because I found it an absorbing portrait of a friendship in which I wasn’t sure if the two people in it even liked each other. Georgette, called George, is from a working-class family, and Ann is her wealthy college roommate. It is the late 1960s. For me, the book had a fresh angle on the protest movements. George’s focus in college is trying to pull herself up.
To me, George and Ann’s friendship is like a house on a cliff–dangerous, depending on what door you open. This book has stayed with me because it explores why people remain friends, even if the relationship is difficult to the point of pain.
It is Columbia University, 1968. Ann Drayton and Georgette George meet as roommates on the first night. Ann is rich and radical; Georgette, the narrator of "The Last Of Her Kind", is leery and introverted, a child of the very poverty and strife her new friend finds so noble. The two are drawn together intensely by their differences; two years later, after a violent fight, they part ways. When, in 1976, Ann is convicted of killing a New York cop, Georgette comes back to their shared history in search of an explanation. She finds a riddle of a life, shaped…
I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and am the middle daughter of three. My sisters and I were close in age, and, of course, our home was girl-centered. The three of us attended the same all-girls Catholic high school, though we each had our own friends. Because of my childhood, I love books that explore how women make friends and keep them, how we let them go, and why. The genesis of friendships interests me, whether childhood, high school, college or motherhood. I love to read books by women where girlfriendships are not an afterthought or window dressing but central to the characters’ inner lives and the story being told.
Absolution is about the wives of American men with non-combat roles in the U.S. government in Vietnam. The men have brought their families to Saigon. Tricia is a new arrival, and Charlene lures her into the insular world of the American wives. I’ve always been interested in the politics of the late 1960s in the U.S., so I found this book fascinating because it takes place in 1963, before the Kennedy assassination.
I was captivated by Tricia and Charlene’s friendship because it is complicated and intense. I loved how Tricia is intrigued by Charlene but also intimidated by her and aware that they’d never be friends if they’d met under different circumstances. McDermott skillfully portrays the ambiguity inherent in many friendships, and I appreciated her exploration of this dynamic.
Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Oprah Daily, Real Simple, and Vogue
A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.
You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.
American women―American wives―have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on…
Ava Winston likes her life of routine in Lexington, Kentucky. Then a tornado blows it away. Ava is safe in the basement, but when she emerges, only one corner of her home stands. Rather than crumbling under the loss, she feels a load lifted. Maybe something beyond the familiar is…
I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and am the middle daughter of three. My sisters and I were close in age, and, of course, our home was girl-centered. The three of us attended the same all-girls Catholic high school, though we each had our own friends. Because of my childhood, I love books that explore how women make friends and keep them, how we let them go, and why. The genesis of friendships interests me, whether childhood, high school, college or motherhood. I love to read books by women where girlfriendships are not an afterthought or window dressing but central to the characters’ inner lives and the story being told.
This book is both atmospheric and deeply eerie, and I didn’t guess what was really going on.
From the time she was born, Laura Shane has had a mysterious guardian who appears out of nowhere and intervenes in her life for the better. The question of who he is drives the novel. Laura is orphaned by the age of 12. In foster care, she meets Thelma. Their tough childhood bonds them for life, and I think their friendship is a poignant example of "found family." When the supernatural overtakes Laura’s life, I love that it’s Thelma she turns to.
It is definitely science fiction, but I never felt like the characters were merely devices to serve the intricate plot. Laura and Thelma stayed with me long after I finished the book.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz's brilliantly thrilling novel of suspense.
In the midst of a raging blizzard, lightning struck on the night Laura Shane was born. And a mysterious blond-haired stranger showed up just in time to save her from dying.
Years later, in the wake of another storm, Laura will be saved again. For someone is watching over her. Is he the guardian angel he seems? The devil in disguise? Or the master of a haunting destiny beyond all time and space?
"A gripping novel...fast-paced and satisfying."-People
I’ve always been fascinated by the role of women in war: men may be on the front lines, but women deal with its impact and often struggle to have equal standing. I was inspired by stories told by my mother who was a nurse in World War II and participated in surgery under gunfire and helped liberate a POW camp in Germany. Yet, no one wanted to hear from her because she was “just a nurse.” Fast forward to Vietnam where women were still being marginalized. I wrote The Fourteenth of September to even the playing field by telling a story that was largely based upon my own experience in college during l969-1970.
A great portrayal of how the impact of war becomes part of our DNA whoever we are.
In the summer of 1969, a small town in Kentucky was famously traumatized after the decimation of the entire National Guard Unit it sent to Vietnam, a higher percentage of deaths than any other geographic region in the country. Based upon a real-life incident, this ingenious novel traces the repercussions of grief and loss through every level of the town’s society.
Cementville has a breathtaking set up: 1969. A small Kentucky town, known only for its excellent bourbon and passable cement, direct from the factory that gives the town its name. The favored local sons of Cementville’s most prominent families all joined the National Guard hoping to avoid the draft and the killing fields of Vietnam. They were sent to combat anyway, and seven boys were killed in a single, horrific ambush.
The novel opens as the coffins are making their way home, along with one remaining survivor, the now-maimed town quarterback recently rescued from a Vietnamese prison camp. Yet the…
When students ask me if I am from Kentucky, I say “no, but I got here as quickly as I could.” I chose to make the state my home and raise my family here, and I have studied its history for nearly three decades. I am drawn to Kentucky’s story and the paradox it represents: on one hand, you have the Derby, rolling hills and pastures, and fine bourbon, but set against that polished, sophisticated image are the stereotypes of a lawless, illiterate, poor state. As a borderland, not quite north or south, east or west, Kentucky offers a fascinating lens through which to view the nation’s history.
Following in the footsteps of scholars, such as Kristen Hoganson, who have put a new gender spin on well-chronicled events, Sachs takes a familiar story—the story of America’s first frontier—and tells it in a fresh and compelling way by emphasizing how manliness and mastery shaped public policy and household relationships. Life in the west was risky and chaotic. Settlers coped by celebrating domestic order and by demanding the right for men to rule their own households. This patriarchal ideal, however, often led to violence, both outside the home and within. The individuals Sachs spotlights like, widow and powerful businesswomen Annie Christian, and outcast criminal and murderer Bartholomew Fenton, provide a totally new perspective on frontier life.
On America's western frontier, myths of prosperity concealed the brutal conditions endured by women, slaves, orphans, and the poor. As poverty and unrest took root in eighteenth-century Kentucky, western lawmakers championed ideas about whiteness, manhood, and patriarchal authority to help stabilize a politically fractious frontier. Honor Sachs combines rigorous scholarship with an engaging narrative to examine how conditions in Kentucky facilitated the expansion of rights for white men in ways that would become a model for citizenship in the country as a whole. Endorsed by many prominent western historians, this groundbreaking work is a major contribution to frontier scholarship.
Paper Dolls is the memoir of a girl who becomes a young woman in a passionate search for an enduring friendship. Deprived of her older sister, Tess Vanderveer, by the neediness of an Irish ghetto girl, Dove Delaney, Gwen also loses the friendship of Millie Dietz, the beautiful daughter of…
I grew up in a small town myself and have always loved books that create characters from the setting. I want to feel immersed and captivated by the place, as well as the people and stories within the pages. The setting of an eerie small town is one of my favorites, because of the feeling that anything magical or mysterious could happen there. My book Starling takes place in a strange small town where odd things are everyday occurrences. There are many books that use small towns as setting for a speculative story, but these are some of my favorites!
This book is small town Americana at its best—and at its strangest, and most magical. It reflects on the bittersweet moments after high school in a rural Kentucky town. When our main character starts seeing strange things that aren’t really there (or are they?) and she meets a mysterious boy, her entire future may change forever. It’s like a surrealist Friday Night Lights, full of heart and destiny and the paths not taken.
Natalie's last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start...until she starts seeing the "wrong things." They're just momentary glimpses at first - her front door is red instead of its usual green, there's a pre- school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn't right. That's when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls "Grandmother," who tells her: "You have three months to save him." The next night, under the stadium…
I’ve practiced criminal law in Appalachian Kentucky as both a defense attorney and a prosecutor—not at the same time—for twenty five years. I can tell what’s genuine from what’s contrived in no time flat. Sometimes I can suspend my disbelief, but usually I can’t, so I lean toward books that get the details and intricacies right. If you’re looking for some modern Appalachian crime tales told by people who know how to a tell a story and know how to get the details of the place right, this list is for you.
This was the first book I read written after 2000 that got modern life in Appalachia dead on right and it changed the way I looked at my own writing.
I love the way the past intersects with the present as Clay’s own life flirts with violence, all while he seeks the truth behind his mother’s death during his childhood. I was never sure where it was all headed until the final pages.
In his New York Times bestselling debut novel, Silas House introduced himself as an important voice for Appalachia, and indeed, for the entire rural South. In Clay's Quilt, now a touchstone for his many fans, House takes us to Free Creek, Kentucky, where a motherless young man forges his path to adulthood, surrounded by ancient mountains and his blood relatives and adopted kin: his Aunt Easter tied to her faith and foreboding nature; his Uncle Paul, the quilter; the wild girls Evangeline and Alma; and a fiddler whose music calls to Clay's heart. As he struggles to stitch up the…
I am passionate about little-told stories of women’s lives. Too often, women have been either minimized or silenced, and in so doing, we have ignored the experience of half of humanity. I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s in the South, where girls and women were not listened to. For this reason, among others, it was hard for me to speak up for myself, hard for me to write. I found the stories of strong, courageous women—bad-ass women—whether fictional or real, to be life-affirming and inspirational in my own journey as a writer. These stories have helped me to say, “It’s my turn. I’m talking now.”
OK, I’m a pioneer junkie, and here’s the scene: Kentucky frontier, 1700s. Daniel Boone country, but he’s a minor character. I love the star of this show: Hannah, a large, strong woman who holds her own in this time and place. I love how she seizes upon her limited choices. As one of the few women in the settlement, all the unattached dudes want to marry her, yet she proposes to the one who’s too shy to ask.
I love that she values her own survival skills: plowing and hunting, chopping wood, weaving cloth, working until the moment she goes into labor. This is the type of woman who settled the American wilderness. She made me wonder about all those like her whose stories I’d never heard.
In the novel Hannah Fowler, Janice Holt Giles created a pioneer woman who would, In Giles's words, "endow her own physical seed with her strength and courage, and her own tenderness and love." First published in 1956, this work is the second in Giles's series of historical novels on Kentucky, which includes The Kentuckians and The Believers.
Samuel Moore and his daughter Hannah set out for the border country with a party led by George Rogers Clark but left to follow the Kentucky River to Boones' Fort. As the story opens, Hannah is nursing her father, injured when an axe…
Two sisters. One opulent hotel. A chance to change everything.
For 17-year-old Clara Wilson, the glamour of the Roaring Twenties feels worlds away. With her family on the brink of eviction, Clara pins her hopes on a position at the grand Hotel Hamilton. But when her adventurous sister impulsively follows…
As a lifelong Kentuckian with a lifelong fascination for history, true crime, biography, and the supernatural, once I started writing, I pursued these and related topics. The writer Charles Fort’s research methods interested me: he read old newspapers looking for forgotten stories. That seemed a good way to find little-known information. I am a lecturer in the English Department at Eastern Kentucky University and have spent two decades reading old newspapers issue by issue between classes and taking notes on possible stories. The books on my list also include much detail on entertaining obscurities, and I hope you enjoy them.
This is a lavishly illustrated collection of old and new oddities from around the state, including cryptids, ghosts, cave mummies, UFOs, roadside attractions, the Melungeons (what’s a Melungeon? Read it and see), and the famous Blue People.
I was attracted by the entertaining writing style, the inclusion of both documented fact and folklore, and biographies of historical characters.
That’s a question Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman have enjoyed asking for years—and their offbeat sense of curiosity led them to create the bestselling phenomenon, Weird N.J. Now the weirdness has spread throughout key locales in the U.S. Each fun and intriguing volume offers more than 250 illustrated pages of places where tourists usually don’t venture—it’s chock-full of oddball curiosities, ghostly places, local legends, crazy characters, cursed roads, and peculiar roadside attractions. What’s NOT shockingly odd here: that every previously published Weird book has become a bestseller in its…
